Abstract

This book is an expanded version of the John Locke lectures delivered at Oxford in 1995 by one of the leading Australian philosophers. Its principal aim is to provide a defense of conceptual analysis against the familiar attacks of W. V. Quine and his followers, and to show that it is an indispensable method of philosophical inquiry. Being suspicious of abstract metaphilosophical declarations, Jackson builds his case for conceptual analysis upon detailed discussions of particular metaphysical and ethical doctrines, such as physicalism, the primary quality view of color, and cognitivism and descriptivism concerning moral discourse. Hence the book is as much an original metaphilosophical study, as an important contribution to analytical metaphysics and ethics.